A University of Staffordshire PhD student has received national recognition for research that could transform how bloodstain evidence at crime scenes is analysed.

Emma Hook has been awarded the Science & Justice Review Award by the Chartered Society of Forensic Sciences for the best review paper published in the peer-reviewed journal Science & Justice during 2024–2025.

The award, chosen by the journal's Editor-in-Chief and the Society's Council, recognises Emma's paper, Bloodstain Classification Methods: A Critical Review and a Look to the Future, co-authored with University of Staffordshire academics Dr Sarah Fieldhouse and David Flatman-Fairs, alongside Professor Graham Williams from the University of Hull.

Recently, the research team led by Xiang Ma and Fan Gu from East China University of Science and Technology developed a luminescent soft material by doping coronene into an epoxy-based shape memory polymer, demonstrating both actuation capability and tunable ultralong afterglow property at high temperature. This strategy enabled real-time visual monitoring of dynamic material deformation at temperatures up to 200 °C, opening up new avenues for intelligent equipment monitoring, information encryption and circuit protection in extreme environments.

Sand may seem simple, but for scientists it is one of nature’s trickiest materials to model. At the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA), researchers are reimagining sand one grain at a time, showing how tiny changes in shape can make sand flow, pile up, resist pressure—or even withstand attacks like a fortified (sand)castle. The findings were presented at a leading computer graphics conference and published in ACM Transactions on Graphics.